Sean and Paige are where? Here's where you find out what's happening with them in India...

Welcome to India

This blog is intended to make a country that most Westerners find to be otherworldly not so much so. We enjoy sharing our experiences, noting our observations, highlighting our impressions and otherwise recounting our adventures in India while helping our blogwatchers to be vicariously closer to this grand country. Welcome to India.

Everyone is surprised when we tell them what the biggest challenge is for us and this CCH program in India.

A: Sean vs. the heat?

B: Paige vs. the spicy food?

C: Jaya and Rayne vs. being so far away from home?

D: None of the Above

Answer: D

Now, admittedly, these are personal challenges as opposed to program challenges, but if we could change one thing in India, it wouldn’t be the heat, the fire-breathing food or even India’s geographical location to, say, Mexico.

The hardest part of India for us is the hopelessness and vision-less mentality of the villages in which we work.

Our biggest challenge in India is to speak life and hope into village mindsets that have never imagined one of their own attending a university, working outside of day labor or marrying in the mid-20s rather than the mid-teens (females…actually, “girls”).

When we bring in a child to one of our church-based orphan homes, we ask the pastor to immediately begin sharing the long-term vision and hope for the child with their extended family who maintain the rights to that child. The family thinks of the home as a boarding school, but doesn’t think beyond what is normal for life in the village: Labor, drinking, abuse, men carousing with men, women hiding with women.

When we speak of health, spiritual growth, University graduation, professional jobs and then, only then, marriage, often the extended family responds in fear.

Fear of the possibility.

Fear from jealousy.

Fear that their child with run off to Hyderabad, Mumbai, or worse, New York, marry a foreigner and never come home again.

We share with them the possibility their child now has the opportunity to become something more purposeful and how family can be a part of this. Family and marriage will be a part of this, but only after he or she has established herself with studies and a sense of identity as a child of God, not a child of the village or just someone else’s property (auntie or a husband or the village elder).

What you prepare to be challenged by when working in rural India is almost by definition not what you will be most challenged by. It’s always the unexpected. The surprising. The un-planned for.

We’re learning more and more that you can’t rely on your own strength in India, but on God’s faithfulness both to us as well as these kids who, despite such hardships, have been given a true second chance, but only if their families ultimately agree to this chance…

In Part 2 of this dual blog posting (next Thursday night), we will look at this challenge from a national perspective and examine a bit more closely how the biggest threats to national security may not be border vs. border anymore, but something much more difficult to determine and harder to combat!

Thursday, February 18, 2016

A Path Appears illustrates a story of how an poor, underperforming school

in Brooklyn started a chess team and the school's academic ability skyrocketed

We often have teams of college-aged students come through our area of India for a month at a time. We have them conduct various lessons or complete various projects for Covenant Children's Homes, but this past January we had the team tour from home to home playing chess.

Playing chess.

Not Checkers. Not Chutes and Ladders. Not Cricket.

Chess.

A New York Times Bestselling Book by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn brought to the world the story about Intermediate School 318, an inner-city Brooklyn junior high school who created a school chess team and the academic improvement was almost instantaneous.

The conclusion is that learning to play chess well sets the brain on a course of learning to critically think in many different areas of life.

Insert CCH.

One of our most challenging undertakings is to help our CCH kids learn how to critically think for themselves and how to creatively think about their lives and their futures. If chess can help our kids think, and if thinking will help our kids excel in school, and if excelling in school brings the opportunities and dreams we have always had for these kids, well then bring on the Kings, Queens, Rooks and Bishops!

Chess and CCH just became good friends.

Let's hope the results are as good as at Intermediate School 318 in Brooklyn.

(By the way, we highly recommend A Path Appears to illuminate what is happening nationally and internationally to provide opportunity for people and create possibilities for changed lives.)

Sunday, February 14, 2016

For those of you who love podcasts, or those who love travel, and especially for those who love both, have we got a treat for you!

In August, I (Sean) conducted an interview with Chris Christensen of the Amateur Traveler website and podcast. It was the second time I had done an interview with Chris (Sweden in 2007) and just as enjoyable and interesting as it was previously.

Amateur Traveler is one of the longest running travel podcasts on iTunes and is always highly ranked on travel podcast charts. The average AT podcast is downloaded 10,000 times!

Take a listen to hear all of my thoughts and experiences about travel in Hyderabad specifically, but also India in general. It's 50 minutes long, perfect for a drive or while doing household chores. Also available on iTunes, episode 477.

One of the (many) challenges of
our work in India is that, let’s be honest, India is just so far away. For most reading this, literally a whole world away.

And it’s as culturally distant
from the Western world as it is geographically.In order for someone to sponsor a home with Covenant Children’s Homes
(and we have now 25 entities that sponsor at least one home of children!), they
have to overcome what feels like, and is, a long-distance relationship.

And, in order to have one of those
home sponsors make a memorable and rewarding personal visit to their sponsored
home, they have to overcome the geographical, logistical, financial and time
obstacles that are challenges with any travel, but especially to India.

When the Narsimgolu girls met their home sponsors,

smiles were in abundance.

In our five years on the ground
here, we have had eight of our CCH children’s homes be visited by their home
sponsors.These times are so meaningful
and bonding, but also illuminating as the sponsors see their homes and the
lives of these children in India in person.Pre-conceived notions are broken and new understanding takes place,
which can be challenging (facing rural poverty always is) and also encouraging
(to see the transformation that is taking place).

Jason and Laura Berns receive an Indian village welcome.

Recently, Jason and Laura Berns,
longtime friends and also sponsors of three of our children’s homes, made the
admirable journey from Los Angeles to Dubai to Hyderabad, only to then travel
by train and car many more hours to visit their homes.The boys of Modugalapalem, the girls of
Nelaturu and the girls of Narsimgolu met their home sponsors and everyone came
away very blessed.Games, stories,
gifts, dancing, music, skits, prayer – all of this is naturally a part of home
sponsors visiting their home of CCH boys or girls here in India.

If you are you sponsoring a home
with CCH, could you come for a visit?

Sean & Paige Whiting

About Us

Southern California natives, we met in 2008 while both living abroad. We were married in 2009 and spent our first year in Santa Barbara, CA - the place we both consider our adopted home. After spending some time in the past in India working with India Christian Ministries, we decided to devote an extended period of time and now work with at-risk children in rural, developing areas of India's southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh. Welcome to our blog - we hope you find our adventures and observations interesting, enlightening, entertaining and inspiring.